The Election on Twitter

In what seems to have become an expectation during all major events, a Twitter tracker from the New York Times shows you what candidates are getting the most and least buzz. Each circle represents tweets from a candidate, retweets, and tweets direct at, colored appropriately by party. Press play and they grow and shrink over time. Select a specific candidate(s) to see the specific breakdowns.

Remember, though, that Twitter users skew to an older population, which tends to vote more often. It “might” be interesting to do a post-election correlation to see if Twitter is a good predictive metric.

I’m not sure if I get this exactly – just because someone is tweeted about doesn’t mean that is good or bad or that someone will be voting for the person – they might be getting a lot of flack or ridicule via Twitter – or conversely they might be getting positive feedback or mentions – this isn’t tracking that from what I can tell. So great big circles may not be a good thing – of course there is that sentiment that any publicity is good publicity – but well, that remains to be seen- I think a few candidates have proven that to be a fallacy.